


The Genesis

by viaorel



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Established Relationship, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 09:29:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5243228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viaorel/pseuds/viaorel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It all started when Alana Bloom, a social worker in an orphanage, was given a task to accompany a renowned married couple willing to adopt. What she did not suspect, however, was that all had been premeditated and taken care of long before the sleek black Bentley pulled up at the doorstep of the institution. And thus began her fall down the rabbit hole that would either destroy her or lead to a liberating genesis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Genesis

It was not the sunken feeling of a fall she was afraid of. She’d had it before.

The first two months after her abortion at sixteen, when the days would drone on like overchewed gum and the world seemed to have shrunk to the small frame of her bedroom window.

The first meaningful breakup. Not the very act but the couple of hours prior. The anticipation, the knowledge.

The day she had to drop out of university and forever emasculate her ability to dream.

She knew the fall intimately, and the years of seeing and feeling and being a human had braced her to become callous about it.

So no. The fall was fine. Almost a norm by now, at thirty four, no kids, no warm shoulder to cry on or bite into in the heat of the moment. Sometimes it felt to her as if at some point a breach occurred on the smooth surface of the ship called Alana’s Life, and water started trickling in, sneakily but with malice. And _that_ was the moment the water had finally stated its presence.

It seemed wrong and perhaps a tad too dramatic, but she could put a finger on the exact moment when she realized this was the beginning of yet another fall, this one – a real pickle. It was the moment Will Graham finally took off his damned posh shades, revealing the gashing mess inside his blue eyes, pointed at the loner sitting in the corner with a scarf wrapped around her neck and said, “I want that one.”

 

All he told her was that a married couple was coming to see the kids. The administrator was in the habit of failing to mention things because, as they liked to say with the other staff, Chilton will be Chilton. Always the klutz. Always ending up the source of some screwup.

Long-term acquaintances assured things had gotten worse after that story with the Gideon stalker and the kidney. Doctor Chilton’s thoughts, no matter whether he was playing with the little ones in the main hall, checking the state of the kitchen or giving an interview, were always elsewhere, chained to the rock at the bottom of the ocean that was his Gideon past.

So he forgot things. Sometimes it would slip his mind to take care of the bills, and the orphanage would live without electricity or water for days on until he’d get it sorted out.

Chilton will be Chilton.

“Oh yeah,” he said to her as they were standing like soldiers at attention on the front porch, eyeing the sleek black Bentley driving up to them and crushing the hot yellow-leaved carpet with those implacable tires. “They’re filthy stinking rich, very famous and very much gay. Be nice.”

 

In her early days, when the dream of becoming a renowned psychiatrist was still fresh and crunchy, just like a ripe September apple, she would rush home after classes to gulp down anything she could find on criminal psychiatry, and the name Hannibal Lecter would be on the short list of names she went to bed and woke up with. She read, and read, and read, until it felt like these people – the deific cream of the crop, the unreachable few – were following her wherever she went, sharing their insight with her, acclaiming her own.

In real life, Hannibal Lecter’s voice was much different from the one from so long ago that it might have never even happened. The real voice was more poignant, more vivid, more _there_. A surprise which, for some reason, blew off all the sugarcoat and left her with a cake much too stale to enjoy. Talking with the real Lecter was a chore.

It might have been the threatening suit and the posture. It must have been the topic, too.

“We have considered a surrogate,” Hannibal was explaining as they were strolling down the wide halls of the Warm Hearts Orphanage, the only orphanage in Virginia proud to take in any child regardless of the past. “Will and I have a great friend who offered to help, but it would seem fate was leading us elsewhere.”

“She got cold feet?” Alana asked, not really knowing how to say it politely and hating the man for putting her in this position.

The other one – Will Graham, also a familiar name from her early days, one of the whisperers – gave a scary start at that and then promptly averted his eyes. They were still concealed by shades, and it had been fifteen minutes since the two of them exited the fancy Bentley, looking like retired catwalk models on a lazy vacation. Besides, it was October – not a particularly good month for shades.

“We lost the child,” Hannibal Lecter said, his rich foreign voice breaking in the middle. ( _Very conveniently_ , Alana thought for some reason and almost slapped her own lips afterwards.)

Will Graham kept staring at the framed children’s paintings on the wall, his hands deep in the pockets of his pants. Alana suddenly remembered the first time she saw his picture in the papers. It was more than ten years ago, and a terrible monster had been incarcerated all thanks to the new FBI starlet with the head full of spicy issues. Freddy Lounds could not get enough of him back then. Alana had been following Graham’s career for about a year, after which everything was lost, including her involvement in criminal psychiatry.

Surprisingly, Graham’s voice was almost as she had imagined it to be. Tumultuous and ripe with barely concealed contempt. The voice of someone who had lost and gained, and lost, and lost again, and then found peace in losing.

“After that unfortunate incident,” Lecter continued, stealing a glance towards his husband, “Will and I agreed to not roll the dice again. And therefore we are here.”

“Are you one of the caretakers here, Miss Bloom?” Will suddenly turned his face to her, and she couldn’t help a treacherous shiver run down her now-damp spine.

It was not so much a stare but a challenge.

“I’m a social worker, I provide counsel for the children here, but I carry out some of the caretaker work as well from time to time.”

“Ah,” Lecter mused, his smile showing a glitter of his small but formidable teeth, “Frederick has always been a trifle parsimonious, I’m afraid. Shame. A place as nice as this one deserves a respectable amount of personnel.”

“Doctor Chilton loves this place,” she felt compelled to refute. It sounded like she spit it out.

“I’m sure he does,” Lecter said half-heartedly and then approached his icy-voiced husband to place a soft hand on the small of his back. “Will?”

“When can we see the children?” Graham asked with a jerky chin movement, like a man jolted awake from a deep unpleasant sleep.

Alana felt her whole guts tremble and shrink with a deadly mix of feelings for this pair.

She showed them the children, of course. Hannibal patted them on their pretty little heads and expertly showered them with compliments. The girls all left them like cute little lobsters, streetlight-red and giggly. Will stood by his side and watched, the damned shades still on. Sometimes he would get in on the joke but hop out of the conversation as soon as the kids mustered up their courage to ask things.

Then lunch time came and all the little unfortunates flooded the dining room, filling the long benches like a flock of sparrow younglings, their uniform dresses and suits adding to the picture.

That was when Abigail Hobbs walked in. She was wearing her dad’s old shirt, and she smelled of fish. Alana always spotted rainbowy scales on that girl’s clothes whenever they would have their regular chats, and would always think the same thought. How could Chilton allow this? The girl clearly had some serious rats in the attic, why give her a fishing rod with real hooks? And it wasn’t like the fish in their pond bothered anyone.

Abigail didn’t spare anyone a glance and just placed herself in the corner, alone. She was the oldest among the unfortunates, and the loneliest. Usually the relatives took care of the teens, anticipating the dreadful change their kinsman would have to face in an orphanage. Besides, the teens were easy to bring up: only a couple more years – and off you go, into the big wide world.

Abigail had been rejected by all of her relatives. And so she lived alone, fished alone and ate also alone, which seemed rather fitting, seeing how she allegedly lured, killed and ate all those girls with her dad.

 Alana shivered at the terrible thought. Sometimes they got the better of her, despite all her cautiousness. Some lousy social worker she was.

That is when Will Graham finally took off the shades and made the announcement. The rest was history.

 

When they were saying their goodbyes five days later, Abigail cared enough to give Alana a long soppy hug and a firm nod to Chilton. He nodded back and then stole a terrified glance towards her new parents. They were standing right behind her, like two bodyguards on the lookout.

“Time to go, Abigail,” Will said, and Alana could not believe her ears. That voice was like butter.

Abigail smiled, not just with her lips but with her whole face – something Alana had never seen in more than two years of intensive work with the girl – and happily obliged. The Bentley made a swift turn and drove away into the gloomy mid-fall road.

Alana and Chilton stayed on the same spot they had first met the Lecter-Graham family. Something solemn was hanging in the air, Alana could almost taste it. And she was finally gaining her voice back.

“ _Now_ can you explain this to me?”

“What?”

Chilton’s well-groomed hands were crossed on the head of his cane, showing little care, but his ever-agile face gave him away.

“You screw the parents’ brains out with the paperwork and make them wait for months till they so much as touch the child, and yet you just give away Hobbs to this couple of freaks? The same week they first came? Frederick!”

“Hannibal is my friend, Alana. I owe him a great deal,” he said, trying to reach the disappeared car with a glassy, lizard-cold look in his eyes. “And I owe my life to Will Graham, I’m sure you remember why. Besides, if it’s not the two of them who can bring up a child as difficult as Abigail, I know of no other candidate.”

She scoffed.

“Don’t you think it’s even a little bit strange that a renowned psychiatrist and an FBI rock star specializing in serial killers chose the child of a notorious psychopathic cannibalistic killer for a daughter? It doesn’t strike you as odd at all?”

“What are you implying, Miss Bloom?” Chilton raised an eyebrow at this, suddenly gaining resemblance to a very pissed-off squirrel.

“You know!”

He gave her a long, God-forgive-her sigh (of which he was expert) and turned to the front door, ready to saunter off.

“If you mean that they might use her for some unorthodox experiments, dig into her past, write papers on her – let me be just perfectly clear, Miss Bloom, I do not care one tiny bit. Hell, let them write a whole book, a big fat one. I’ll buy it. I’ll make you all read it. You and I both know that the girl had no future, no social ties here, no family, so why not? As long as there are takers.”

And with that, he limped through the open door, his cane clicking ominously behind Alana’s back. She kept staring at the road, long before Chilton was gone, aware that the feeling stifling her was not just fear of falling.

Falling down the rabbit hole had not been a problem for many years. It was what lay in wait down there that froze the very marrow inside her bones.

She knew that the rabbit had been long dined on. And the beasts were getting hungry again.

 

**MURDER FAMILY IN THE MAKING?**

_Graham and Lecter adopt the Shrike’s daughter. To what covert end?_

_An article by Freddie Lounds_

 

Some of my readers accuse me of being obsessed with the deadly duo of the FBI’s favorite go-to guy and his notorious socialite of a husband who, may I remind you, both have blood on their hands. (Granted, they had been acquitted, but some of us are not as forgiving.) And yes, I agree that my interest for the couple can be seen to some as banal stalking, but get this, my friends. Not so long ago I got wind that Lecter and Graham started frequenting one Warm Hearts Orphanage, a place I got to know quite well two years ago. This is the place Abigail Hobbs was put in – the only child and the last surviving victim of her father, Garret Jacob Hobbs, the infamous and the awe-striking Minnesota Shrike.

And then, almost a week later, when I was walking in the neighborhood of the Lecter-Graham house (on a completely unrelated matter, mind you), imagine my surprise when I saw all three of them getting out of the car looking all too familial, Dr. Lecter’s firm hand on Abigail’s shoulder, the other – around Mr. Graham’s lithe figure. They stood like that for a while, letting the unfortunate teen take in the image of her new home, and the serenity of the moment mesmerized even your humble narrator. I almost forgot to take pictures, but luckily for you, sentiment is not my kryptonite.

Two days later I happened upon Graham and Abigail again. The two of them were laughing and joking happily while standing in the icy-cold water of the river, fishing rods in their hands. Dr. Lecter joined them later with a picnic basket, and that is when I was politely asked to leave. Abigail definitely recognized me (How could she forget? I was the only journalist dogged enough to defend her integrity till the end), but Will Graham turned so aggressive - one could argue mental - that I had to step back, afraid for my life.

My trip to Warm Hearts gave very little. The staff there, administered by one Doctor Frederick Chilton, who I’m sure you all remember as a Gideon survivor (what good times the three of us used to have!), is a very cheerless folk. They despised strangers roaming around their abode two years ago when I interviewed Abigail Hobbs and they still despise any kind of intervention. The only real news I got was that the local social worker, Alana Bloom, will be paying the family regular visits to make sure Warm Hearts’ trust in the Lecter-Graham wedlock hadn’t been misplaced.

But sentiment aside, am I the only one who calls fishy behavior here? This is not a regular child we are talking about, nor is it a regular couple. All of the trinity are more than familiar with taking a life, one of the daddies’ job is to think like killers, the other has written more than a dozen scholarly papers on the subject and is currently employed as an FBI consultant on special cases that get even Graham breaking a sweat. And then along comes Abigail Hobbs, an innocent victim of a monster who had been secretly making her dine on human flesh for years. The girl may have been only fourteen when Garret Jacob Hobbs was put an end to, but the damage that was done to her psyche is permanent.

Why did Lecter and Graham’s choice fall upon this particular child? They could have taken an unstained soul, someone younger and more susceptible to the idea of a new family. Instead they open their doors to a broken sixteen-year-old social outcast, a victim of the system.

You are free to keep saying I am obsessed, and that I may be. But what I am most definitely not is blind, my friends. Something terribly shady is being concocted here, and I promise to get to the bottom of this, whatever it will cost me.

 

 

Alana was looking, but her mind was elsewhere. Thinking lethargically about how willowy that figure is, how she always admired people with large soulful eyes, estimating the price of that dangerously vermillion scarf around the woman’s neck.

Anything but.

“You haven’t changed one bit,” Margot Verger said, and that was the moment the whole world came crashing down.

Her first instinct was to cover the three feet between them and embrace the woman, but the air around Margot was too different now. Not the familiar, welcoming warmth she used to ignite around her with a sensuous smile, but not toxic either. It was the same Margot from ten years ago, but she was just _another_. As if somebody had taken everything that was inside her out and stuffed her full with other memories, encounters, heartaches and tears.

It was a strange feeling – wanting that embrace so badly and not knowing if she _may_.

“I see you have met,” Hannibal Lecter concluded with a slight delighted twitch of his lips. “Well then.”

And then he and Will Graham left the room with seemingly unconcerted synchronism. The stuck-up bastards, as if they hadn’t known.

Margot Verger was clad in a formidable power suit, pants straight and sharp as needles. Those legs used to give Alana so many confusing thoughts. Those eyes still were the ocean, cold, deep and unforgiving. Oh Margot, how? How could you be here?

“You were informed of my visit,” Alana’s voice cracked on _my_ , making her cringe.

No matter how much you run, you will never get away from your first-heartbroken self, the twenty-something romantic with shattered vision of the future and no desire to piece anything back together.

“Yes, Will told me.”

With her radiant pale skin and icy features, Margot resembled an ivory statue, something under-the-counter, for the selected few to admire.

“Oh. How do you two know each other?”

“I was the surrogate. I’m sure they told you.”

Alana froze, an army of needles trickling down her face and travelling down her body. Looked down at Margot’s abdomen. Margot spread her hot-red lips in a cold smile.

“I lost the child. Lost more than that, actually, but all in its due time. How are you?”

_How am I? Has there ever lived a person who knew how to answer this question?_

“Good. I’m a social worker down at the orphanage where they fished Abigail from. But you know that by now, of course.”

“Of course.”

An obnoxious voice from behind startled them both.

“Am I interrupting anything? Oh, hello, Miss Bloom. I love your suit. So inappropriately sexy.”

Mason Verger was, just as always, an explosive mix of menacing and uncannily weird. The same disastrous hair, the confused frown ever ready to burst into hysterical guffaws. A nuclear war shrunk to the size of one human body.

“I hope you don’t hold any grudges over the way we left things, Miss Bloom. Sometimes I tend to overdo things, especially when my precious sister is concerned. She’s never been able to take care of herself. So incapable, that one.”

He moved into their zone, thus stomping the fragile vines of hope about to intertwine between the two. Always stomping them, religiously.

“I’m assuming this is the first time you’ve seen each other since those days. Oh, you were both so young back then. I remember. Young and foolish, the lot of you. To be honest, Miss Bloom, I almost fed you to my pigs. Ha! Too bad Margot talked me out of it. Bad for the pigs, right? Ha ha!”

Alana had always seen Mason as a thorn in a great lioness’s paw. When the lioness first felt the thorn, her kindness thwarted her resolve, and she let it stay. But the thorn knew its purpose. And the thorn dug deeper with the lioness’s each step, and sooner or later it would kill its host.

“So,” Mason threw himself energetically into an armchair and locked fingers over his kneecap, then took his time assessing them both. “I hope this isn’t another one of Doctor Lecter’s kooky plots to get me and Margot to make up. I haven’t known the guy for long, but it seems the good doctor is pretty resourceful. What is the big idea with all of this, Margot? Huh? Better tell me now, you know me, how impatient I can get with you.”

Ah, the old shiver. Alana did not miss seeing Margot Verger tremble like an aspen leaf ready to disentangle from its mothertree. She did not miss those cheeks go dead-pale either.

“Or, wait, I know!” Mason’s whole face lit up like a Christmas decoration (a very ugly one). “Does he think that I owe Margot something after that incident? Am I supposed to allow this now because I was too greedy and took too much?”

“It wasn’t yours to take, Mason,” Margot accentuated laboriously, eyes going wet, and at that moment Alana knew everything.

 

The dinner was tolerable. Mostly because of Abigail, who seemed to have discovered a true friend in Will Graham. They exchanged little puns and swallowed little smirks while Doctor Lecter shot proud loving glances at them. Alana kept asking for refills. So did Margot. Who seated them opposite each other? That was crueler than making her share a meal with Mason Verger.

The only nice thing about that evening was seeing the dynamics the new-formed family manifested. It was akin to that of a team that had been wading through life together for years, monolithic and keeping those hands firmly locked.

Apart from that – it was all a blur with too much wine and a couple of carefully measured laughs.

And then, at a certain moment Alana stopped registering where her body was and what it was doing. She remembered sitting on a sofa a tad too close to Margot and inhaling her musky scent while listening to Hannibal Lecter play a soft melody on his harpsichord. (Who the hell plays the harpsichord these days?)

Margot was there, right next to her, and it made the hair roots on Alana’s head crawl with bare, obscene hunger. How was one supposed to be expected to keep good company in such conditions?

Then, seemingly hours later, Alana found herself on a bed too wide and pompous to be her own, and Margot was there too, slowly unbuttoning her shirt, beautifully silky to the touch. Then things went dark.

 

The blood woke her. It was not hot, not as they describe it in books, but sticky – yes. And it smelled. There was so much of it that it immediately coated her naked breasts and trickled down only to seep into the crumpled sheets.

Alana gasped. Even before she saw Mason’s gash of a throat hovering above and making croaking, wheezing noises, she knew what was on her. With some primal part of her brain, she knew.

The night-lamp to the right of her was on, illuminating the bedroom ( _Where? Where is it?_ ) unobtrusively, and when she finally looked up, there was no way to hide from it.

Margot, still naked, long curls sprawled all over her delicate shoulders and twitching with her every move, was holding her gurgling brother by the hair with one hand and with the other – cutting deeper into his neck. A small vindictive smile was wandering over her lips as she was doing it.

Alana shrieked and tried to move away. Two things stopped her. The weight of the body on her (Mason was naked too for some reason) and the voice reaching her from an unlit part of the room.

“Stay exactly where you are, Miss Bloom, or else you will send all of us to prison.”

Alana fainted.

 

“You spiked my wine.”

Hannibal Lecter exchanged a quick look with Will Graham, and the latter sank his hands into the pockets of his fancy pants ( _at least he’d lost the shades, thank God for small miracles_ ).

“We are sorry, Miss Bloom. We did not want to make you feel uncomfortable.”

She did not care to stifle a sarcastic laugh. She was still visibly shaking.

They did not let her wash off the blood, not until they were perfectly clear on the story. Lecter only allowed Margot to put a blanket over Alana’s shoulders, and now they were huddled close on the bed with Mason’s (finally) breathless body lying next to them, growing cold and stiff. Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham and Abigail no-longer-Hobbs were standing in front of them, faces equally lithic.

“What I mean,” Graham continued, “is we did not want to use drugs on you, but it was essential for the story. Mason was known to be unprincipled when it came to what he wanted. He had more than once used the same drug on Margot, Hannibal has records of their therapy sessions where Mason confesses to that. Among other things.”

“Such as?”

Graham locked eyes with Margot, and she gave him a curt nod.

“Breaking you two up because of his all-consuming jealousy. Threatening you into dropping out of university. Not wanting to share Margot with you, and the other way around.”

Alana felt a cold shiver run up her spine.

“He..?”

“Miss Bloom, Mason was _obsessed_ with your relationship. The things he confessed to Hannibal, oh. You made him feel things he had never felt before, thought he was incapable of. You and Margot, together. Blissful. He did not destroy you out of spite back then. He did it out of love, his vision of it.”

He used his words like a skillful surgeon with an artist’s soul buried inside. Every body is a canvas. Every cut is a brushstroke, perfectly measured and serving its purpose. Every drop of blood can be made into art.

 _That’s one twisted artist_ , a choked thought leapfrogged out of Alana’s subconscious depths. She shifted uncomfortably in Margot’s embrace, feeling really naked for the first time in this drudging nightmare of a night. And they still hadn’t called the police.

 “The confusion abated over the years,” Graham went on, a perfect veneer of glassy insouciance covering the darkness, “but made a treacherous comeback when he found out about your connection to our Abigail. He knew from the papers that you would be frequenting our house, and he knew sooner or later Margot would find out. And he wanted to be the first to strike.”

Everyone in the room, save for the dead Mason Verger, honed in on Graham’s face, strangely closed and distant. The best word Alana could find in her head for what she was feeling now was awe.

“Traces of the drug will be found among his belongings. More of it will be discovered in his home.”

“But why assault me here?” Her gravelly voice sounded out of place after his smooth soliloquy, a dark poem to one twisted mind. “Why not invite me over to his house or kidnap me from the street? Doing this in other people’s house, with all of them present is insane.”

“Mason _was_ insane, everybody knew that. He was aware of this dinner, it was on Margot’s daily planner with your name underscored and circled. The police will find it, connect the dots. We will all testify. You have nothing to be afraid of, Miss Bloom.”

“We will protect you,” Hannibal Lecter stepped in, his whole figure firm and unforgiving, an inhumanly neat three-piece suit on at 3 a.m. “Margot means a lot to me and Will. We trusted her enough to bring our child into this world, and Mason Verger took that away. He was a thief and an oppressor, Miss Bloom. He stole from us, from Margot, from you. Our dreams, our love, the last bits of our childhood innocence – he took.”

“This is a reckoning long overdue,” Margot whispered into Alana’s hair as she placed a kiss onto the top of her head.

“We have to call them now,” Will Graham pressed. “And you have to decide what to tell them, Miss Bloom. Either all of us go to prison for premeditated murder,” he made a point turning to Abigail, “or we all get away with it, you get Margot back and your degree with Hannibal’s help, not to mention become filthy rich on the way.”

Something audibly burst inside her at that, and Alana finally cried.

They did call the police, and she duly fed them the story. The rape kit showed evidence of forced entry (Margot’s merit) and semen on her inner thighs as well as inside her. Abigail “remembered” seeing Mason put something in Alana’s drink, and Doctor Lecter weighed in with his therapy confession horrors. The wounds on her body were ruled out to be most definitely defensive.

God looked the other way, and all was good.

 

 

“Fancy dress. Is it also bought on the money of your dead rapist brother-in-law-to-be? I hope you’re not calling the child Mason.”

Alana blocked the doorframe to the bridal changing room with her body. She was barely much taller than the journalist and just as slim, but the dress and the belly made her feel bigger, stronger. As if she were a mother bear protecting her cubs.

Freddie Lounds narrowed her piercing eyes, effectively skewering the woman, and Alana darted a glance towards the dressing table where her phone was. She could call Will and get it over with fairly quickly – he despised the redhead.

“Miss Lounds. You are not on the guest list.”

“I came as a plus one, Miss Bloom. Or is it Mrs. Verger-Bloom now?”

“Not until later today, as you and I both know,” Alana smiled dryly. “Miss Lounds, if I were you, I would leave. Now. I don’t really care what you write about me and Margot, but my good friends Will Graham and Doctor Lecter have put a lot of effort into this wedding, and I’m sure they will be very disappointed to find out you were intent on ruining it, not to mention harassing me.”

Freddie’s smile seemed plastered to her sharp, maddening face.

“Your powerful friends made it impossible to approach you for an interview, I had to get creative. Besides, this might be the only chance I talk to you again. Anyway, how are you feeling? When are you due, in four months?”

Alana’s left hand instinctively dropped onto her protruding belly.

“I don’t want to give any interviews. I said everything I had to say in court.”

“Oh, but I wonder.” Suddenly all of Freddie was in her face, poignant odor coming from her long red curls made up in an elaborate hairdo. “Miss Bloom,” she whispered, “if these people are keeping you against your will and making you do all this, tell me now. I can help, I have FBI on speed dial. Don’t worry about the baby, I’ll take care of everything. You’ll be safe.”

Alana stared into those pale serpent-cold eyes seasoned with the veneer of genuine care. Words failed her as a strange feeling washed over her.

She knew it was some kind of trick, the knowledge came from her very heart, and yet. . . And yet for a second, very small and insignificant, Alana let her imagination run loose. What would really happen if she just..?  Would that really be that bad?

Suddenly, an unwanted memory emerged onto the surface of her mind. It was late November, three months ago, and they were all staying in a cabin much like the one Abigail’s father used to have. There was an antler room too, but it was virgin – Hannibal and Will had just recently bought the house for Abigail, and none of them was a skillful hunter.

Abigail had a ball showing them the ropes. They’d be gone for hours, all three of them, stalking, training, bonding over blood.

Alana could remember the ripe smell of wet leaves under her rubber boots, appropriately yellow. The warmth of Margot’s hand in hers. The thick bark of centenarian trees, some of them mossy and looking like decorations for a dark fairytale.

And then – a whirl of auburn hair and Abigail’s happy face, covered with drying poppy red droplets, a rifle in her hands. Brownish crust under those nails. They had run into each other on a path, one of the many winding paths in those perennial woods, and Abigail, bursting with emotions, pulled her and Margot close. Laughing. Her breath brushed over Alana’s ear.

 _We got one_.

Alana looked up and away from the girl’s face and saw two figures standing at the root of their path. Hannibal Lecter had that special little smile on his lips, one he usually showed when Alana answered the question correctly during their educational hours. He was a very patient and talented teacher. What had he just taught Abigail?

She saw Will Graham rest his hand on Lecter’s shoulder, squeeze it lightly, and just then – she knew.

 _They really did get one_. _They got me._

“What are you doing here?”

Alana came back and stumbled upon Abigail’s malicious frown. The girl was standing in the hallway behind Freddie, wearing a purple dress, a matching vaporous scarf around her neck. She had the same murderous expression as Will Graham often did when that Lounds woman was concerned.

“You can’t go near Alana, we have a restraining order.”

Freddie eked out a sour smile.

“Hello, Abigail. It’s nice to see you again.”

Alana’s heart was suddenly very much audible in her throat. Both of her hands were on her belly now, protective.

“Leave, now,” Abigail thundered, “or I’m calling my dads.”

“Abigail,” Freddie began in a buttery voice, stepping closer just one bit, “You’ve known me long enough to understand that I’m only trying to help.”

“You called us Murder Family,” Abigail deadpanned, eyelashes only slightly trembling, but her eyes were still dark and cold as well pits. Will Graham would be so proud, that was his routine.

“I did, yes. And now I want to write another story, one from your standpoint. I want to reveal the true you, Abigail, and Will, and Hannibal, Margot and Alana.”

Another step. Abigail looked disgusted but stayed put.

“You are old enough to understand how fishy everything seems from an outsider’s perspective. How fearful people are of your little clan here.”

And another one. Alana felt nausea rising up her esophagus.

 _Please, just not on the dress_.

“It can get very lonely in a world which sees you as a monster. I can make that go away. I can make many things go away, Abigail. If you’d just let me.”

Alana closed her eyes and saw the top of Abigail’s head in front of her face, and the fallow-leaved ground under her wet yellow boots, and the two figures at the end of the path. _Those people did not need to be shown the ropes_ , a thought hit her all of a sudden. _They’ve always known how to get one_. _And now the cub knows too_. _And she will sink her teeth in_.

“Not one step closer,” Abigail half-growled, head dropping, eyes glinting vigilantly. Her right hand slithered somewhere into the puffs of her dress where her tiny shoulder bag was.

Freddie paid no heed. She never did, that woman. Will had more than once warned her, so did Hannibal - in his own, clandestine way, - but she just wouldn’t listen.

Maybe that was righteous. Maybe that was how things were supposed to go from now on. Her reunion with Margot had been sealed with blood, perhaps the wedlock demanded just the same immolation. That made sense. She was marrying into this family, and she must respect the rules under the roof.

“Abigail, I come in peace, please just let me talk to you and your family-”

Abigail drew her hand out, and Alana couldn’t watch. She shut her eyes, knowing full well what would follow.

It did not.

“Will? There’s Freddie, she’s harassing Alana! Come quick!”

A phone. Just a goddamned phone, that’s what she was fumbling for. A wave of warm relief washed over Alana, embarrassment lagging not far behind, and her feet had suddenly lost all their strength. She grabbed the door frame and made a conscious effort to stand still.

Freddie shook her head.

“You’re making a mistake, Abigail, trust me. These people, they feed on poor souls like you and Alana Bloom. They will stifle you and your sense of reality, and they will make you believe it is you who’s in control of your actions. They kill, don’t you understand?”

Abigail said nothing. Her face turned ashy and just as stoic as that very night, the night that had brought them all impossibly close together and tied in an inescapable knot. The night Mason Verger’s blood marked the genesis of a new family.

 “They’ve already made Alana kill,” Freddie went on, malice in her every word. “They’ll get to you too, and soon enough. And you will think you want it, that you were born to do it. And this is how they will win.”

_The hot and the awfully red streaming onto her naked skin. Don’t wash off the blood, Miss Bloom. Scratch his shoulders like this, Miss Bloom, you need some proof of self-defense. Touch this knife, Miss Bloom. Your fingerprints must be on it. You may cry, it will look perfect._

It must have been the terror. So strongly captivating it was, so vivid. Something made a thumping sound, loud and heavy, and then Alana was all of a sudden bewilderingly aware of Freddie’s smart seafoam shoes, and then – the barely tangible smell of the floor. Then she felt her body lying in an unusual, uncomfortable position, something she would never have pursued consciously.

“Alana!”

Margot’s voice. Somewhere above.

Her hands. Will’s dangerous hissing, Freddie’s agitated threats of exposure. Hannibal’s composed promise to deal with her later.

Alana’s eyes started to ache with all the uncried tears. She closed them and drifted off, into the darkness.

 

“We can do this privately, if you want. I’ll just send the guests away, and we’ll be done with all of it.”

“No.” She touched Margot’s hand, clad in an impossibly white ornamented gauntlet. “Please. My dad is in there, all of my colleagues.”

“You’ll get new colleagues as soon as Hannibal gets you in one of those appraised schools. And he never breaks his promises, you know that by now.”

Alana kissed the hand. It smelled of flowers. Something too beautiful for this world and just as deadly. The thought brought a smile to her lips.

“I’m fine. Wife.”

“Mm, I like the sound of that.” Margot pulled her close, and Alana, studying their reflection in the mirror, thought, _We really do look like we belong together_.

Her gaze wondered past their white-clad figures and captured three more standing near the exit. Their poses still wary, but their eyes welcoming. Abigail from the mirror gave her a reassuring smile.

_Yes, we belong together. All of us._

 “Why are you all still here?” Alana asked the reflections. “You should be in the hall, making sure the guests don’t get bored and flee.”

Hannibal shared a strange meaningful look with his husband.

“We couldn’t leave without you.”

“Wherever we go, we go together,” Will added and placed an arm around Abigail’s shoulders. She happily leaned into the touch.

“And Lounds?” Alana asked. “I don’t think I can handle any more of her today. She’s gone from our lives, right?”

“Not quite, no,” Hannibal’s eyes glimmered with covert glee, “but Will and I will get on it as soon as everything is settled with you two princesses.”

 Alana closed her eyes and relaxed into the embrace of her bride. It was comforting, but what truly kept her at peace was the people around. The imminent danger they exuded. The love along with it.

Margot pressed her chin into the hollow over Alana’s collarbone.

“It’s time.”

And it truly was.

She had fallen down the rabbit hole, and the beasts rounded her, and celebrated her becoming with all the mirth they were capable of. And now she was lying belly-down on the damp unforgiving floor of the cave, surrounded by darkness, the decaying bones of all the rabbits, and her new family. And her empty stomach started to growl again, famished and demanding.


End file.
